Rain
by jooliaboolia
Summary: AU, Sakucentric. Sakura is nearly mortally wounded by a bullet to the head. The first struggle is the healing process. The second struggle is discovering who did it, and why. For genre, also some supernatural.
1. Delirium

Rain

Chapter One - Delirium

* * *

><p><em>Beep<em>

_..._

_Beep_

_..._

_Beep_

_..._

The steady beat was my friend. Always there, never faltering. Like a drum, or a heartbeat. It was secure. The only secure thing at that moment. Everything else was a blur of colors and images, snippets of snippets of memories. Waves of false clarity and dizziness.

Total confusion.

How did I get here again? I couldn't place the correct answer with the corresponding question. Even more important, where _was _I? Sometimes I would hear murmurs, voices. The words they spoke were never clear. Was this the dream, or was this the reality? I couldn't be sure, and that irritated me to no end. _Come on, _I would plead over and over to no one in particular. _Just tell me already._

I remember opening my eyes for the first time. I felt blinded. But I suppose weeks of darkness will do that to you. Once my proper vision returned, I needed even more time to answer some of my unconscious questions. I was in a bed. In a grass-green room with a small counter and sink on one wall, a small wardrobe-looking thing on another. The ceiling was white and speckled and the fluorescent lights were on, but dimmed to the lowest they could go.

I had no window. What, was I less important because I was asleep? Maybe I would want to know if it was night or day when I woke up. But less important than who, or what? Was there anyone else like me? The effect was that I felt more and more like nothing outside this room existed.

Oh. A clock, to my left, on a small table. But all I could make out we're the small, bright red blocky lines. I stared and stared and stared some more, but I just couldn't make out what they meant.

The lines were opposite from the beeps. The beeps were my friends. The horrific red lines, however, were my enemies. Not wanting my brain to hurt anymore than it already did, I turned my face away from the offending clock.

Good and bad - a concept I quickly came to understand. Sheets were good. They were soft and a warm cream color. The flowers on the table next to me were bad. They were browned and droopy. The walls were also bad. They made me feel confined, and the color made me sick to my stomach. Soon, I was labeling everything in the room as either good or bad, even the temperature and humidity of the air.

Soon enough, a sound separate from the friendly beeps made its way to my ears. A slide, a click, and a squeak. And the door in the corner of the room, which I had labeled as good, opened, the forming crack facing me. A person, like me, but with a different body stature, slowly appeared. Was he really moving that slow? Or was I just slow on the uptake?

Then I made the connection between male and female. He was male, and I was female. Suddenly, I felt proud of myself.

The person was pushing the door open with his back, because he was carrying a vase of beautiful, live flowers in one hand and a large card in the other. His hair was dark black, and his eyes, I noticed when his met mine, were a nice shade of obsidian. And the general color around him was a royal blue mixed with dark purples.

Hmm... his color. As far as I could tell, this was new to me. Like an aura, or something of the sort.

When he saw me, his eyes widened. Shock? Disbelief? Horror? I didn't know. But his color changed. It now had hints of yellow.

"Sakura," he whispered, cautiously.

Who? Me? I couldn't find words. I couldn't figure out how to move my lips, or even make a sound.

"Can you understand me?" He placed the new flowers where the old ones were, and placed the old ones on the floor, out of sight, and the giant card in front of the beautiful new flowers. Then the strange man pursed his lips, as if thinking.

"Blink once for yes," he said a few moments later, "and twice for no."

Again, I was confused. His frustration was apparent. But then he took a steady breath and the muscles in his arms relaxed. He was wearing a t-shirt, I noticed. Did this mean it was warm outside?

"_Blink,_" he said to me, exaggerating a motion of closing his eyes and reopening them.

Oh, yeah. Blinking. I know what that is. How could I forget?

How _could _I forget?

The corners of my mouth tugged upwards, and my cheeks started to hurt a little bit. But I mimicked his display and closed my eyes tightly, and opened them a single second later.

He smiled arrogantly. It almost didn't seem like a smile. The word I was looking for escaped me.

"Sakura, do you know where you are?"

Blink, blink. This was easy. Finally, someone to come answer my questions. Sort of. I know I was answering his questions technically, but something in me told me that I would soon know what I needed to know.

"You're in a hospital. Do you know what a hospital is?"

Hospital... where sick people go. Am I sick? Blink.

"Do you know why you're here?" His eyes bore intently into mine, and I briefly wondered how the back of his hair was able to stand up like that.

Blink, blink.

He sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. The card he was holding earlier had been propped up, open, facing me, onto my bedside table. I squinted at it intentionally and then squinted at him.

"No, that's not from me. Naruto made that for you." He ran a hand through his bangs. "I'll be right back, okay? I'm going to get some people who will be able to help you better than I can. So don't worry, okay? You won't be alone long."

I wasn't worried about being alone. I had my beeps. I blinked, but he was already out the door.

A few minutes later, the door opened again. More people came in. A lot more people. There was the same dark-haired boy, a blond boy, a stout woman with short brown hair, and a busty woman with long blonde hair in pig tails.

They all had different colors. I looked at the blond-haired boy. Immediately, he had caught my attention, simply because he was different from the others. His eyes, while bright blue, had dark circles under them. Almost like he had been punched. But he was smiling, and nearly jumping out of his skin. But the most interesting thing of all was that it almost seemed like he had _two _colors.

A lot of these people had mixed colors. Like the dark haired boy. His was blue and purple and a little yellow and now some orange too. But something about this blond boy set me on edge.

"Sakura!" The busty woman said. "You're awake!"

Blink.

"One blink means yes," the black-haired boy said, "and two means no."

The blonde woman glared at the boy. "Yes, Sasuke, I think we're all aware of the blinking rule. In case you forgot, we use it with a lot of the trauma patients." I saw a small vein pop in her forehead, and her color turned orange.

So his name was Sasuke.

"What?" The blond boy said. "Sakura has trauma? Will she be okay?" He finally ran over to me and grabbed my limp hand, which so far I had been unable to move, not that it had crossed my mind to try. "Are you okay!"

"Naruto! Get off of her." This time it was the brunette who spoke. "Sakura-chan, do you know who I am?"

Well, sure. She was my nurse, I suppose. But I didn't know her name or anything else about her. Blink, blink.

"What about anyone else here?"

I looked around at all of the faces around me, all different. Two masculine and handsome, two beautiful with wise faces. All were vaguely familiar. But I knew no names and had no memories of these people. Blink, blink.

"But..." the blond boy allegedly named Naruto spoke. "Baa-chan... You said she would make a full recovery..." his color was suddenly a deep blue. Well, one of them, anyway. The other seemed to remain a constant deep red.

The blonde woman shook her head sadly. "Yes, Naruto. But that's just a hopefully. And she'll have to undergo complete mental and physical therapy. That could take a while." She looked at me with warm eyes. "We need to evaluate her first."

Naruto walked up to me again. "Hi, Sakura! My name is Naruto. And we've been best friends for a long, long time." He looked at me and smiled a very toothy smile. I didn't understand. Why was he smiling when his color was so blue? I blinked once, so he knew I understood him. For the most part, anyway.

The others seemed to follow his lead. I was introduced to Tsunade, who told me I was her apprentice to soon be working at the very hospital I could currently call the only "home" I have. Shizune was Tsunade's assistant. And Sasuke was Naruto's friend, and therefore my friend by default.

I supposedly knew all these people. Somehow, I felt guilty. Like I was letting them down by not remembering. Perhaps I was. I know Naruto expected me to be fully recovered by the time I woke up, and was obviously saddened when I wasn't.

But recovered from _what,_ exactly? I wish I could ask them. Soon after introductions, Tsunade got everyone to leave. She told me she would be back in a few minutes, and followed the rest. But being alone was okay with me. I still had my beeps.

As promised, she came back. But this time she was alone. By now, I felt like I had come to a little bit more. The evil lines on my clock started to make just a little more sense, and I began to long to go outside - a concept I previously didn't know existed. I made sense of everything that was going on around me much quicker.

The beeps indicated my heart rate. I knew that now. I saw that Tsunade brought a clipboard with her, and my senses told me that she was here to record some data about me, most likely the evaluation she spoke of earlier.

"Okay, Sakura. I'm going to see how far we need to work to get you back to your old self."

Blink.

"But first I have to explain what happened to you. You've had some major brain tissue damage. You had a certain... injury. I should probably wait to tell you though, to keep your healing process from coming to a halt. Am I clear enough on this so far?"

Blink.

"We expect some common motor skills to need replacing, and obviously your memories haven't come back yet. We're not too sure about that yet. Right now I'm going to test you to see how much of your motor skills have actually been lost." She looked up at me from scribbling on her clipboard. "All clear?"

Blink. I looked at Tsunade closer. I liked her color. It was particularly green.

She pointed at her lips. "We already know you can turn your head side to side and control the upper half of your face muscles. So let's start here. Can you move your lips at all? No particular way, just controlling how they move is all we need to know."

My lips. How did I work those again? Oh yeah, like this.

The tests went on for too long. One muscle after another, and then another. It was boring. I could move my fingers, toes, and elbows. I'm glad I knew what state I was in, but it was just _too _long. One good thing I learned during the session was how to nod and shake my head and shrug my shoulders. And then she left, promising to come back later that day to teach me how to sit up. And then we'd work on talking. Fun.

When she left, I turned my attention to the large card propped up towards me. On one side was a picture of a stick figure pink-haired girl and a blond boy. I couldn't make out the other side. Scribbles. Words, probably, that I just couldn't understand.

Before I had time to even try to decipher them, the door opened again. It was Naruto, with a sheepish look on his face, as if he had snuck into my room. "Hey, Sakura," he said. "How are you feeling?"

I shrugged.

"I had this idea. You know how you can't really remember anything? Well, I want to kind of trigger your memories. If that's possible. So while Baa-chan was interrogating you, I stopped by your place to pick up some things." He looked down and fiddled his feet, obviously a little nervous.

Interrogation? What an amusing choice of words. I smiled, and he took that as a go-ahead.

He shuffled in his pockets for something. "This," he said, pulling out a small, flattened silver circle, "is what I have from my earliest memory of us." He held it closer to my eyes so I could see it better.

"You came over to my place for the first time. And there's a railroad behind the building, see, so we took some coins and put them on the track and waited all day for the train to come by and smash them." While he spoke, I felt his warm, large fingers on my hands. I looked down to see what he was doing. He had moved my hand so that my palm was facing up, and put the smashed quarter into it. His fingers closed around mine, leaving my hand in a small fist around the quarter.

Suddenly, the imprint of the coin was so familiar it almost hurt. It was almost as if the coin had been specially molded for my hand, or perhaps I had held it so much that my skin formed little creases around it.

"That same day, we tried to climb a tree. You got farther than I did. But we were in the ghetto and there were a lot of creepy people around. And druggies, too. You were really scared. I think you were only thirteen or fourteen when this happened, and you had never seen anyone smoking something illegal before."

He gripped my tiny fist in his large one slightly tighter.

"But the train finally came, and we made it back just in time to see little pieces of silver flying into the air. It took twenty minutes to find that one you're holding now. But you wanted it so badly, you said it was special. So we stayed to find it."

How sweet. No wonder I kept it so long. I didn't know how old I was now, but I knew I was definitely way older than thirteen or fourteen. And if I was Tsunade's apprentice, I would have to be out of high school.

But the story - memory - whatever it was, was too confusing. What he told me made perfect sense. The confusing part happened when my brain tried to make some distant connection in the deep recesses of my brain.

"You okay, Sakura?" Naruto asked, leaning in closer to me. But everything he did was both familiar and unfamiliar, and it was too overwhelming.

"Should I come back later?"

How he could almost read my thoughts was also disturbing. But I nodded anyway.

His hand slid away from mine and moved to my face. "Feel better. I want to see you healthy and strong again soon." He slid my rather short hair away from my forehead and left.

Of course my hair would be short, if the doctors had to work on my brain like Tsunade had said. Still, it was saddening.

That night, I dreamed of bald heads and fast-moving trains.

The coin never left my fist.


	2. Mother

Aura of the Chapter: Yellow = Optimism/Joy

**Chapter 2: Mother**

_Red hair. Blue eyes. She smiles, looking into my eyes from the front seat of the car. When she speaks, the only thing I can hear is a quiet murmur. What she says isn't important, only that she says it. I take my eyes off of her beautiful face to look outside my window. Trees blur past. My heart feels content. _

_The woman has a connection with me. I feel it in my heart. Rose pink. I love her. And I see it in her, too. She loves me - her aura is the same pink as mine. The word - her title, is unreachable. I grasp for it, cling to what I can remember of it. _

_Comfort. Discipline. Love. Security. Safety. Trust._

_Mother._

My eyes opened slowly, as if deeply content rather than shocked. The dream feels strange to me, as though I know the woman - my mother - but she still feels distant. I know she is a mother. I know she is mine. But I do not know her.

The more I think about her, the more I remember her smile, the more I _want _to know her.

The thoughts in my mind of her grow and fester until; finally, someone opens the door. It's Shizune.

"Good morning, Sakura. I'm glad you're awake." She steps in the room and closes the door behind her. "You have a few visitors. I was wondering if you were up to seeing them. Of course, we'll only let in five or so people in at a time, since you're still in recovery mode."

I nod my head. Maybe Mother has come. Maybe I can learn more about her.

First, Shizune brings in a girl with long, pale blonde hair. The only thing I can think is _gorgeous._ Her aura is yellow, and a giant smile crosses her face. Her teeth are perfect and white.

"Sakura, this is Ino. She and you are very close."

I begin to wonder if Shizune's choice of the word "are" is appropriate. I want to correct her - "were" seems better to me. The only woman I feel close to right now is my mother.

"Hi, Saki-chan." She calmly sits next to me on my bed, which has been moved to a room with a window. "How're you feeling?" She puts her slender hand on my shoulder.

I don't shy away. I only look at her and shrug. Not bad, not good. Right now I just kind of... Exist.

"Naruto and Sasuke-kun and I are going to stay here while you get visitors okay? A lot of these people you don't - didn't know as well as you knew us." Her aura gains a hint of purple. "So if you get uncomfortable or need anything at all, just squeeze my hand or let one of us know, okay?"

Nod. Smile.

Easy.

Ino asks Shizune to bring the boys in and she does. Naruto sits on the other side of me and Sasuke immediately goes to the corner of the room and stares out the window. I look at him and then look at Ino.

"Oh, don't mind him. He just hates social interaction. I intend to enjoy every ounce of his suffering today."

I was confused. But then the first visitors came in.

* * *

><p>There were a lot of people. More than I could count, but to be fair, I can't exactly count very high right now. I didn't squeeze Ino's hand once. I was afraid that if I became uncomfortable with one person, my mother might not get the chance to come.<p>

But she never did.

I'm not supposed to speak a lot, to avoid straining my vocal chords, but I hadn't mastered writing and I needed to know. My voice comes out raspy, like a whisper. "Where's my mother?"

The rooms freezes, and the only active auras are deep green and deep blue.

I wish I know what they mean.

"I need to use the restroom," Ino says, and disappears. I'm now alone with Sasuke and Naruto. I look at Sasuke, who turns away further into the window.

"Naruto? Where... is my mother?"

He takes my hand in his and I think of the quarter I have hidden in my pillowcase.

"Your mother is held up at the moment. But she wants you to know that she loves you very much." His aura turns a deep brown color.

"But I want to talk to her," I insist. "I want to know more about her." My throat starts to hurt.

"I'll tell you what," he says. "Ask me anything about her, and I'll tell you."

Instead of asking him, I lean back into my pillow and look at the ceiling, almost as if I am pouting. I don't want a second-hand account of someone so close to me. I want her to be here. I want to see again the eyes I saw in my dream. I long for her touch.

I hear Sasuke and Naruto arguing but don't bother to listen until I feel a hand on my face that moves my head to face the perpetrator.

"Sakura," Sasuke says, looking at me. "Your mother didn't make it. She passed on."

And then Naruto is punching Sasuke and he stumbles backwards and the hope in my heart turns into a hole and I can't see anything or hear anything and I can't feel and everything goes black.

Everything goes black.

* * *

><p><em>Beep<em>

_..._

_Beep_

_..._

_Beep_

_..._

The beeps came back. I knew they would never leave me.

This time, reality comes back to me much more quickly, and I quickly become angry. I hate not being able to walk or talk as I please. I hate being confined. I hate not knowing what happened, but mostly I hate feeling like I've been robbed of my chance to know my mother. Normally, when a child loses a parent, they at least have memories to hold onto.

I scream. I yell until I feel like my throat is bleeding and then I yell some more. And then my yelling turns to sobs and all I want to do is curl up and cry and just not _exist _anymore because there's no one here to be strong for or live for. And then I realize that while all of this is happening, I am being held, and rocked, and shushed, and loved, and I make myself a promise.

I promise myself that whatever happens, I will be strong for this person who is here for me now, so that I may one day be there for him. So I cry and whimper and cling some more, and I breathe in the scent of this wonderful person, and I hold on for my dear life.

I am aware of being placed gently, so gently, back onto my pillow. But I don't want him to let go of me so I hold on until he gives up and lies next to me so I can fall asleep feeling safe and loved and not so alone anymore.

* * *

><p>When I wake again, my eyes feel sensitive and puffy. I remember the feeling of waking up after a long night of crying, and I try to think of all the times I have done it before. All I get is a blur.<p>

I turn to the side to see that I am still clutching my hero from last night by his shirt, and his hand is resting at the base of my neck in the back. When I see his face, I scoff to myself silently. Of course it would be him. I reach under my pillow and clutch my quarter tightly for a moment before letting go again.

"Psst," I whisper. "Wake up." I poke his nose and he lets out an ear-killing snore. I can't quite find the strength to laugh yet, but I smile.

I'm slowly beginning to be able to use my muscles again, so I effortlessly move one hand to cover his mouth and the other to pinch his nose shut.

Within seconds, he is awake and sitting up. He looks at me.

"You should go home," I say. Whispering is easier than talking. "It's dark outside." I gesture to the window. "I don't think you're allowed to be here." I don't say what's really on my mind. He needs to return to his mother.

He turns to look at me with a somber expression. But all he says is "no," and lies back down next to me stubbornly, arms crossed and all.

"Naruto," I say. "I don't want to keep you from -" I am cut off when he turns to his side to face me without warning.

"Sakura-chan," he says. "I don't have a family to go home to."

For some reason, this does not shock me.

He moves his hand to where it was, at the back of my neck, and starts rubbing it softly. "So let me stay," he whispers, closing his eyes.

I want to protest, but I can't seem to find a reason and his hand on my neck feels so warm and soothing that instead I return to the darkness.

* * *

><p>When I wake again it is morning, and Tsunade is here instead of Naruto. She greets me and immediately gets down to business, briefing me on what my physical therapy for the day will be like.<p>

She tells me it will be exhausting, but I want to be able to walk on my own so badly I just ignore her and insist we get started.

I soon learn that by exhausting, she means it is mentally and not physically tiring. It is slow, frustrating work, regaining muscles. I go through many exercises that seem tedious but are all too necessary. By the end of the day, I'm glad that my final exercise involves only speaking for longer amounts of time. And at the end, I even get ice cream to cool my throat down.

Around four, Ino shows up with a girl named Tenten, and I am determined to make these girls my friends again. They tell me about my life and the way it was. They bring pictures of the three of us together at pools and birthday parties and bowling alleys.

I begin to remember.

I only get snippets. But snippets are all I need to know that these girls and I share something special.

They leave by seven, leaving me to thoughts of my mother. I want to remember her so badly, I want to know her. I want to see her smile. I pray to see her face again.

My prayer is answered when Naruto shows up with a photo album. I quickly become excited and hold my hands out for the book.

But he won't let me see it; the rules are simple: I can only look at it when I am ready emotionally and never when I am by myself.

"Can't I see the pictures _now_?" I ask him, hopeful.

He tucks the album under my plain bed and promises we can look in the morning if I don't have any troubles tonight.

I realize he means to stay tonight as well.

"Why is your color so frightening?" I ask him after a long silence.

"Huh?" he looks at me, dumbfounded. He really doesn't know what I'm talking about.

"You know," I say. "Your aura. Yours is different." Maybe he just hasn't realized what I mean yet. Surely he sees the colors too.

"Different how?" he asks with one eyebrow raised. I haven't grasped facial expressions yet, but he looks amused. He's sitting in the chair beside my bed and I adjust myself to a sitting position.

"You know what I mean. Everyone has mixed colors. Like Sasuke has a lot of dark blue but also a _lot _of orange and sometimes green. And Ino's is mostly brown and light blue. But you... It's like you have two. One is mixed like everyone else's but the other one is just... Well, constantly red. It's scary."

His color turns mostly deep green and then the dark blue flares up. His breath catches in the back of his throat.

"Why are you so quiet?" I ask him. "Did I say something wrong?"

"Will you promise me something, Saukra-chan?"

"Sure."

"Don't tell anyone else about what you can see."

"Okay," I say. "But why?"

"I'm not sure if you know this or not, but seeing a persons aura isn't normal. No one else I know can do it. So if you tell Tsunade and she doesn't believe you or thinks you're crazy, you could be here a long time."

I was silent for a moment. Only I can see the colors? But why? And more importantly, how? "But you believe me." When he nods, I continue speaking. "So why wouldn't she?"

'"Because..." he stops and scratches the back of his head. "You kind of hit close to home with what you said just now. And I promise I'll explain it some day, but not now, okay?"

It takes me a second before I finally nod. I'm extremely curious, but I don't want to pry and push my most important friend away from me.

"I want to show you something," he says, pulling a single picture from the album and giving it to me.

It's a picture of a rock two feet wide and half a foot tall. It's a normal grey rock, the only exception being the splatters of color across the surface. "Nail polish," I say, suddenly just _knowing_. The word pops out of my mouth before I can register it in my mind. And it feels good, so good that my heart does leaps.

"Do you remember?"

I try to picture it in my mind, but I still only get a blur. So, I shake my head no.

"One day, you decided you had too much nail polish. So we stuck it all in a bag and smashed the bottles against the rock. I thought you might remember because it was something we did over a period of time."

It's so familiar it's painful. It's so distant it's heart-breaking. I take the photograph from his hands and tuck it under my pillow to rest with the quarter. Maybe these pieces will someday complete the puzzle that was my life.

Soon, Naruto began to doze, and I let myself follow him.

I dream of my mother and colors and rocks and knights in shining armor.


End file.
